Chapter 2
AN: No romance means no romance, DS, none what so ever. Ta for the reviews tho peeps.
Brennan jumped to his feet as Jesse and Shalimar entered the lab, taking a step forward as if considering approaching them. Flinching at his sudden movement, Jesse watched as Shalimar disappeared around the corner. Resisting the temptation to growl at Brennan for undoing ten minutes of calming his friend down, Jesse turned to Adam.
"Emma should be OK, Shal thinks she was drugged with something. You might want to check on her. Shal's hurt, but they've both taken some shit tonight, she's a little jumpy." Jesse didn't want to lie to the other men but had decided it was Shalimar and Emma's decision what got said and when.
"Was it Shal's blood?" Brennan asked.
"No, at least I don't think so. She sorted out the guys that were messing with them. I didn't ask any more. I'm not sure I want to know what she did to spill that kind of blood."
"How is Shalimar hurt?" Adam asked. Jesse shook his head.
"She has burns, bad ones but I don't know how bad, she wouldn't let me see them. She doesn't seem to be hurting too badly though and that can't be a good sign." Adam nodded his understanding.
"Can you go after her? I want to check on Emma quickly. If she's sleeping normally then I'll leave her. I'll meet you in the medilab." Jesse nodded and headed out of the door.
Shalimar hadn't got far when Jesse caught up with her. She was stood staring into space in the doorway to the main hall. She glanced back as Jesse walked up behind her and started walking away. Jesse knew better than to try and stop her. He didn't want to grab at her arm and risk upsetting her more or hurting her more. She was barely a few steps into the hall when she stopped. She turned back to him, frowning, her face suddenly very pale. "Jesse?" She asked, face becoming pinched with pain. He was at her side in a second.
"Shal, what is it?"
"It hurts." She managed to breathe out.
"OK, we're going to see Adam OK? And he's going to give you something to make it feel better." She took hold of his shirtsleeve as she began to convulse in on herself, taking both of them to the floor. Carefully Jesse lifted her from the floor trying not to shake her too much. A whimper as he stood made him wince, but he continued to carry her into the medilab, thankfully not far from where she had fallen. Adam was already there when they pushed through the door. He looked up from where he was configuring the sensors.
"She collapsed." Jesse explained briefly.
"Lay her on the table." Adam ordered.
"Hey, Shal, I'm gonna have to put you down now. If you let go of my sleeve Adam can take a look at you." Shalimar shook her head, biting her lip to try and contain the pain.
"Stay." She managed eventually. Jesse could see a spot of blood appear on her lip where she had bitten through the skin. Nodding he turned back to Adam.
"Can you do it with me here?"
"For now." He nodded turning to Shalimar. "Shalimar, the burns are making your muscles tighten, OK? I'm going to give you a small injection to make them relax." At her nod, he quickly injected her with a muscle relaxant. When her muscles had relaxed enough to allow her to lay out straight on the bed Adam spoke again. "I'm going to need to move this shirt Shalimar. It's covering where you're hurt. Can I do that?" She nodded briefly though Jesse could see her eyes widen a little more. Adam unbuttoned the lower couple of buttons but left the rest, pushing the shirt out of the way but leaving her covered. Jesse wondered briefly if Adam had worked out what had happened on his own, but all thoughts fled his mind when he saw what Adam had revealed.
Shalimar had been wearing a tight T-shirt, hipster Jeans and a sweater against the cold when they had gone out earlier that evening. The sweater was gone, though it seemed most likely that this is what the man with a lighter had caught first - whether on purpose or through drunken stupidity. There was a hole in the front of the T-shirt that revealed her whole stomach and looked like it disappeared higher, though the recently added shirt still covered her. The white cotton was blackened on the edges and much of the pattern had been burnt away, just the crown of the little pink angel showing. Her jeans had met a similar fate, fire destroying much of the front of their waist. There was a plain circular mark on her skin beneath where the button should have been - though it had been lost with the material surrounding it - where the heated metal had branded her. Somehow Jesse couldn't process the damage above that, in the skin of her stomach and waist. All he could see was that mark.
He foggily registered that Adam was talking to him and looked up dumbly.
"Jesse?" Adam asked again. "Are you OK?" When the young man nodded he continued. "The damage isn't as bad as it looks. It could have been a lot worse." Jesse looked down again and registered that Shalimar's hand had dropped away and a drip had appeared in the other arm. "She's sleeping now, I need to set the computer up to work on this. Are you sure you're OK?" He asked again as Jesse's eyes clouded over again.
"Yeah." He managed. "I'll be fine. Why didn't it hurt her until just now?"
"She probably held back the pain out of necessity until she thought she was safe. Adrenaline is sometimes the best painkiller. I assume she drove back, Emma wasn't in any fit state, and Brennan said she carried Emma in. She wouldn't have been able to do it if she was in so much pain. It's probably going to be worse for her because she did it, but if she hadn't they wouldn't have got home. Neither of them."
Stepping out of the way of the scanners which would start to help Shalimar's body recover Jesse forced himself to look at the rest of Shalimar's injuries. He knew a little of burns, having attended a first aid class when he was younger and from spending time with a fire-elemental girl-friend shortly after he had joined Mutant X. He seemed to remember it was such discussions that lead to their eventual break up. On Shalimar's sides she showed the characteristic reddening of first-degree burns. These traced a line around the edges of the material that had been destroyed where the fire had only just brushed her. Towards the centre were the more damaging and painful second-degree burns. These were large blisters of fluid that covered most of Shalimar's abdomen that the body had made to try and protect the damaged skin and the tissue underneath. And then there were the third-degree burns. The blackened skin ran in a thick line across Shalimar's stomach, where fire had damaged the deepest tissue. These were burns which would cause Shalimar no pain but which were the most damaging. A couple of years ago she would have needed a skin graft to cover the wound as no new skin would grow to scar over the area naturally. But technology had developed to allow the skin to be healed in these areas; the beam that shone down on his friend was, even as he watched, providing the damaged skin with new growth to replace the blackened mess.
Jesse looked up to find Adam frowning.
"Adam? What's wrong?" Adam mused for a minute.
"The burn on her stomach is in a bad place. I'm worried about muscle damage."
"Is it that deep?"
"I'm not sure yet. I can't do anything at the moment. I want to put up a field as soon as possible to contain a high humidity - to try and get those burns healed up as soon as we can."
"Can I do anything?" Adam looked a Jesse for a moment.
"Try and decide what you're going to tell Emma. She'll be awake soon, and she needs to know what happened."
Please review. I know what the next chapter will bring but if no one offers me any ideas soon I might end it there. I can't really write any more without an idea of a story line at least. So IDEAS people. Thank you!
